iBeacon as Presence Sensor

[JDRoberts]

Welcome! This is discussed in the presence FAQ. I use Ibeacons as presence sensors myself.

There’s no direct way to do this, but there are a number of different methods.

Typically you will have some beacon receiving app which can do an HTTP post, and then you will use that Web hook to integrate with SmartThings. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using the IFTTT maker channel, have it receive the webhook, and then turn on a virtual presence sensor in the SmartThings channel.

You should be able to do this with the radius networks SDK if you want to write it yourself.

I personally use the Beecon plus app, which I like, but is only available for iOS and the developer has since moved on to other projects so there is no support for it at all except the FAQs on their website. So I no longer recommend it to people just because of the lack of support, but it is the one I use.

Anyway, here is the presence FAQ, so you can start there:

FAQ: The Many Ways of Detecting Presence (2020)

Presence, regardless of the device you use, is one of those features that works great for some people, not at all for other people, and is randomly flaky for still others. It’s very much affected by local conditions. So some people will find that phone presence works much better than the SmartThings-branded presence sensor. Other people will find the reverse. Still other people, myself included, find that they have to use a combination of two devices in order to get reliable presence indication. So if this feature tends to work differently for different people, where do you start? 1. Using a Smart Phone as a Presence Indicator [image] Well, since most people who have SmartThings have a smart phone, it’s worth starting there. This method has changed significantly in the change fro…